Earning Her Stripes
by ack1308
Summary: When Emma and Madison, with Sophia's help, decide to escalate their tormenting of Taylor to a whole new level, things are going to get interesting. And not in a good way.
1. Part One: Three Vials

**Earning Her Stripes**

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Part One: Three Vials

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_[A/N 1: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]_

_[A/N 2: This is an AU; details will show up in the narrative.]_

_[A/N 3: Taylor does not have a connection with Queen Administrator in this fic.]_

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**Early August, 2010  
****Barnes Household  
****Emma**

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"So what's going on?" asked Madison. "You didn't give me any details. Just told me to come right over."

Emma shrugged. "I have no idea. Sophia called me up and said there was something really interesting I should know about. So I decided to bring you in on it."

"Ooh, okay." Madison's face lit up. "Is it about Taylor? Has Sophia found out that all the shit we've been saying about her is true? That would be amazing."

"Dunno. Sophia didn't say much, just that she needed to show it to me." She looked around at a knock on the front door. "That should be her now." Heading over to the door, she opened it. It was, indeed, Sophia.

"Come on in." Emma stepped back to allow her other best friend to enter. "What's this all about?"

Sophia waited until Emma had closed the door, then looked around. She held a backpack carefully in her hands. "Is your family home?"

This was getting stranger by the second. "No," Emma said. "Anne said she'd be staying over at a friend's place, and Mom and Dad are at the Augustus Country Club. They always stay late there. Why? If this is about Taylor, we've still got a month to figure out what we're going to be doing to her once school lets back in." She didn't _think_ it was about Taylor, but it was always good to cover that base.

Sophia shook her head. "Forget Hebert. This is more important." While Emma was still wrapping her head around that statement, the black girl went over to the TV and turned it on. A Slaughterhouse Nine retrospective was playing, reviewing some of the infamous gang's worst atrocities. They'd been going downhill for the last ten years, trying harder and harder to get back into the public eye. When Jack Slash got his head blown off by a twelve-gauge shotgun in the course of an ill-advised home invasion in 2005, it had spelled the beginning of the end. Now, despite the name, the gang rarely had more than five members at a time, and they never attacked big cities at all.

Ignoring the screen, Sophia put her backpack on the sofa and delved into it. To Emma's confusion, she came up with three cloth-wrapped bundles. One at a time, she unrolled the wrappings until she was holding three glass tubes, plugged with black rubber corks. Each one held a metallic liquid which reflected and refracted the light in weird ways as Sophia held them up to the light.

"Whoa …" breathed Emma. "What _are_ they?" She stared at the tiny vials, fascinated despite herself.

"I honestly have no fucking idea," Sophia replied. "All I know is that there was some kind of cape fight between a bunch of people I've never seen before. The fight moved around a bit, and I saw a dead guy holding a case, so I took a chance and grabbed it. The case had these in it."

"And they didn't realise you had them?" Emma considered that to be the high priority.

"By the time they started looking, I was well away from the action, and the PRT was on the way, so they had to bolt." Sophia shrugged. "They never saw me, and they got no fuckin' idea who I am."

"Where's the case now?" asked Madison, frowning slightly. "It might be important."

"Fuck 'important'," retorted Sophia. "Something like this, there's almost certainly a tracking beacon involved. Soon as I got the case open, I dumped it. Along with the canisters these things were in. Just in case."

"You should maybe have left them in the canisters," Emma suggested diffidently. "They look kind of fragile."

"Yeah, no shit." Sophia made a rude noise with her lips. "I accidentally lost two already when they broke against each other. But I've been keeping the rest of them wrapped up and separate from each other since then, so they're good. I just don't know what they are, or why those assholes were fighting over them. They've gotta be valuable _somehow, _right?"

Emma knew where she was coming from. Independent vigilantes had it the worst of all capes. Sophia had to maintain her costume and her gear all on her own dime, while the Protectorate got paid a wage to go out there and wear costumes for the government, and supervillains literally stole money with their powers. The only break she got was that knocking over a drug house meant she could walk away with some of the money and the cops would look the other way, so long as she didn't get too greedy. Technically speaking, selling something she found at the scene of a cape battle could be seen as the same? Maybe?

"I think so," Madison said slowly. "I think I know what they are. And we're not going to be able to sell them. Or at least, the people who are likely to pay the most aren't the kind of people we want having them."

"You're not making any sense," Sophia said impatiently. "What the fuck do I care what kind of people they are, so long as they can pony up the cash?"

"I might be wrong." Madison didn't sound like she thought she was wrong. "But I like reading the tinfoil-hat boards; you know that. And this stuff, these vials … they look awfully like what Cauldron vials are supposed to look like."

Emma burst out laughing. "Oh, for fuck's sake," she managed after about thirty seconds. "You're saying these are powers in a can? That's bullshit. You have to know that's bullshit. There's no such thing." She'd read the same pages Madison was alluding to, though she hadn't gone as far down the rabbit hole. The whole 'Cauldron' conspiracy theory, especially the concept that they gave out 'powers in a can' to people who were particularly deserving, or whoever paid them a small fortune (the stories varied) was deeply appealing. Which was why she distrusted it so thoroughly. Nothing in this world was too good to be true.

"But what if it's true?" asked Madison. "From what you're saying, people were ready to kill for them." She eyed the tubes that Sophia was holding. "I'm pretty sure that's not the new Fugly Bob's secret sauce formula there."

"Well, if they _are_ powers in a can …" Emma stopped. She'd been about to say, 'how much can we get for them', but another thought intruded. "… can _anyone_ drink one?"

"What, _you_ want powers?" Sophia raised her eyebrows. "Who said I'd let you drink any of them, anyway? My fuckin' vials, I do what I want with them. Maybe I'll sell 'em to the highest bidder."

"Who will almost certainly turn out to be a supervillain," Emma pointed out. "Do we really need three more supervillains in Brockton Bay? Wouldn't you rather have a partner to help kick the bad guys' asses?"

Sophia seemed to be considering that. "What happened to Miss 'screw the vigilante life, it's too much work'?"

"We could be a team!" argued Emma, ignoring her words. "Don't tell me you couldn't have done with backup from time to time!" She turned to Madison. "If I drank one, you'd drink one too, right?"

Madison blinked. "I … guess? Whoa, shit, we really could, couldn't we?" She shook her head. "It's just so weird, talking about the idea of just _having_ powers, you know?"

"Yeah, we could." Emma's grin was getting wider all the time. "If we're drinking two of them, who do we give the third vial to?"

"Julia?" suggested Madison. "She's pretty cool. Backs me up in Mr G's class when we're screwing with Taylor."

Sophia shook her head. "Fuck Julia," she said bluntly. "She's a fuckin' wimp."

Emma frowned. The more she thought about it, the less anyone she knew was actually worthy of having powers. Except for her and Madison and Sophia, of course; and Sophia was already a parahuman. "Well, we can't just leave it sitting on the shelf. What if it's got a use-by date?" She eyed the vials. "Maybe we could split the last one between us?"

Madison shook her head violently. "No, that's a bad idea. I read on the boards that mixing vials is a prime way to end up as a Case Fifty-Three. One of the bad ones. Like, no arms and your head's where your butt's supposed to be."

"Yeah, and how do they know this?" Emma tried to feel as sceptical as she sounded. "Did they try it?"

"Maybe." Madison glared challengingly at her. "Where do you think they come from, anyway?"

"For fuck's sake, nobody's going to be mixing any fucking vials!" Sophia made a cut-off motion with her free hand. "Try to think of someone who'd be good to bring on board, and who wouldn't fuck off and do their own thing with their powers once they had them. The last thing we want is someone pulling a Legend."

That was a very important point. The Protectorate—the _core_ Protectorate—had become the Triumvirate after an extremely public falling-out between the four main heroes. The reason for Legend's defection from their ranks had never been made public, just the fact of it; the Triumvirate weren't talking, and Legend wasn't making himself available for interviews.

Which meant that if Emma was going to be giving someone permission to have super-powers, they needed to know who was in charge. There was no sense in giving someone power if she couldn't give them orders once they had that power. She tried to think of someone in her circle who wasn't a total drip, who could also be a useful asset.

Madison's eyes opened wide. "Holy shit," she murmured. "I just had the _best_ idea of what to do with the last vial."

Emma raised her eyebrows slightly. Madison's plans tended to be a little on the elaborate side, but they were usually worthwhile once she and Sophia pruned the deadwood away. "Shoot."

A manic grin split Madison's face. "We give it to Taylor."

Sophia wiggled her little finger in her ear. "Just for a moment, I thought I heard you say we should give the fuckin' thing to Hebert. And I _know_ you didn't say that."

Emma frowned. "I heard it too. What the hell, Mads?"

"No, no, no, listen!" Madison was so excited, she was jiggling in place. "Not right now. We keep one aside, and me and you each drink one. We get used to our powers, and get proper costumes, and Sophia shows us how to be heroes, and we make a name for ourselves." She gestured at herself and Emma and Sophia. "I mean, whatever powers we get, we should make a pretty rockin' team, yeah?"

"Okay …" Emma tilted her head slightly. "Still waiting for the explanation about the bit where we give Taylor one though."

"Yeah." Sophia snorted. "Hope you weren't thinking you'd be inviting _her_ on to our team. She's so fuckin' lame she'd get _negative_ powers." She paused, looking thoughtful. "Unless you wanted to make her do all sorts of twisted shit so she could prove she's worth letting on to the team? That could be worth a laugh."

"Yeah," giggled Emma. "Tell her if she wants to join the team, she's gotta Sharpie a swastika on to Lung's left butt cheek. And get photos."

"That'd be funny as shit," Madison admitted. "But I got an even better idea."

Emma looked at her. "I'm listening."

"So we've got powers and costumes, and we're a proper hero team, right?" Madison made a _come-on _gesture to the other two.

"Right," agreed Sophia. "So what's next?"

Madison showed her teeth. "What's next is that we jump her on the first day of school in September. We force-feed her the vial then shove her in her locker. We're wearing most of our costumes under our clothes already, right? Soon as we've done that, we go change the rest of the way. By the time the stuff takes effect and she gets her powers, she'll be panicking. Everything I've ever read says that if you get powers while you're in a panic, you lash out. So she lashes out, and breaks stuff, and maybe even hurts people. And that's when we come swooping in."

Sophia's eyes had opened wide, and Emma's were not far behind. "Holy shit." Emma's voice was reverent. "That's absolute _genius._ We'd be the big damn heroes."

Carefully laying the vials down beside the backpack, Sophia smacked her fist into her palm. "Three on one? We'll kick her fuckin' ass. And we don't even have to be careful about it."

"And the best bit is, she's instantly outed." Madison beamed at the other two, pleased at their approval. "Nowhere she can run and hide. We can kick her around all day until the PRT shows up, then we hand her over. She either escapes or she goes to juvey. If she escapes, we get to hunt her down, kick the shit out of her all over again, and hand her over to the PRT. Rinse and repeat."

"What if she just does her time and gets out?" Emma felt she had to raise the probability.

Sophia shrugged. "Then we frame her for something, kick the shit out of her—because we'll be the fuckin' heroes and she'll be the villain, so who'll believe _her?_—and send her straight back. Every time she gets out, we put her back, 'til they throw her in the fuckin' Birdcage. Win-win."

The more Emma thought about it, the fewer problems she could see. She shook her head. "I have to hand it to you, Mads. You've absolutely outdone yourself this time." She offered her fist; blushing pink with pleasure, Madison bumped it.

"Hey, before we break our arms patting ourselves on the back, we need to work out the logistics of this," Sophia broke in. "When are we gonna do it, where are we gonna do it, and what are you two gonna do for costumes?"

Emma rubbed her hands together briskly. "As soon as possible for the 'when'. We want to be established heroes before school starts. I'll leave the 'where' up to you, Sophia. You're the professional vigilante." She smiled sweetly. "And as for paying for costumes, all I'll have to do is bat my eyelashes and ask Dad for an advance on my allowance so I can have up-to-date outfits for school. I figure I'll be able to cover you and me both, Mads."

"Maybe we should wait to see what powers we get before we start talking costumes," Madison advised her seriously. "It would suck if you paid up front for a totally rockin' outfit, then got flame powers and had to start from scratch with something that's fireproof."

"Good point." Emma studied the vials on the sofa. One looked silver with a green tinge, one was gold with a blue tinge, and one was muddy grey with flecks of black and white. In her own mind, she decided that she was going to take the gold and blue one. "So, the first step is powers. Seeing what we get, and figuring out how to use them."

Sophia nodded. "Powers and power training."

Madison grinned widely. "We're gonna have _powers_!"

She held up her hand; Emma high-fived her.

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End of Part One


	2. Part Two: Powering Up

**Earning Her Stripes**

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Part Two: Powering Up

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_[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]_

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**Three Days Later**

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"Captain's Hill?" complained Madison. "Why Captain's Hill?" She cracked a yawn.

"And why four in the morning?" Emma added. "Do you know the last time I woke up this early? Never, that's when." She huddled into her jacket, looking around the deserted parking lot. Even the taillights of the cab that had brought her and Madison up there had vanished down the road.

"One, it's deserted," Sophia informed them crisply. "Two, it's not like anyone's gonna be just wandering around the corner. We need privacy for this sort of thing."

"So why not just do it in my bedroom?" Emma rolled her eyes. "We're plenty private in there."

"And what if your powers involve bursting into flames, or exploding ice spikes everywhere, or turning into a fifty foot water monster?" Sophia gestured at the empty parking lot. "Here, nobody will notice. In your room, I think your dad would notice."

"Oh. Yeah." Emma grimaced. "Good point." She plucked at her jacket sleeve. "So should I take this off before I take the vial?"

"Probably," Madison noted. "I think maybe we should take them one at a time, too. I read this one thing, two people got vials and drank them standing next to each other, and they _became one person._" She tried to lower her voice for effect, but this just made her sound even cuter.

This time, Sophia rolled her eyes. "That's ten ton of bullshit in a five ton truck. Great stories, never happen in real life. But maybe you should take them one at a time, so I only have to watch one of you at a time."

"Okay, sure." Emma looked at her petite friend. "You want to go first, Mads, or me?"

Madison snorted. "Taking them was your idea. You go first."

All of a sudden, Emma was a lot less certain about her great idea. But she saw Sophia and Madison both watching her, and she knew there was no way she could back out now. Taking her jacket off to reveal the sweats Sophia had advised they both wear, she kicked off her sneakers as well. The gravel of the parking lot was harsh on her sock-clad feet. She handed her jacket to Madison, who took it.

Sophia brought out the vials and held them so that Emma could see them. Emma reached out and took the one she'd chosen before, the gold and blue one, then began to work the cork free.

"Not yet, not yet," Sophia said hastily. "Give us a chance to get to the picnic area, in case you do something that makes a crater. I'll call out when we're ready."

"Okay, then." Emma waited, trying to shift her feet so the gravel didn't dig so sharply into them, shivering slightly in the pre-dawn chill. She saw her sneakers still sitting next to her, and kicked them so they skittered some yards away. If she did something damaging, she didn't want to lose them as well.

In the distance, Sophia and Madison ducked down behind a brick barbecue, and she heard Sophia call out. "Ready!"

_Okay, then._ She took a deep breath. _I'm doing this to be strong. To show Taylor who's the strongest. Nobody's ever going to make me feel helpless again._ Her hands were shaking as she shook the vial vigorously, then worked the cork out; the air was so still that the tiny _pop_ sounded loud in her ears. A deep breath, to calm her nerves. This didn't work, so she took another one. The vial was still in her hand, open. The contents both beckoned and repelled her.

Abruptly, convulsively, she closed her eyes, then put the vial to her lips. Opening her mouth, feeling the cool glass on her lower lip, she tilted the vial back. The stuff inside slithered into her mouth, and she had to repress the urge to gag, to spit it out again. It was _horrible._ But she had to drink it. This was the most important thing she would ever do with her life. Her eyes were already closed, but she clenched them so hard they hurt, then she swallowed the concoction.

It burned all the way down.

Shuddering, eyes still closed, she lowered the vial from her mouth. Nothing seemed to be happening, aside from a slight roiling in her guts. She didn't feel like she was erupting in flames or turning into rock. Tentatively opening her eyes, she looked down at her hands, one of which held the vial and the other the rubber cork. The vial was definitely empty; the foul taste in her mouth and throat verified that she'd swallowed the contents.

"Maybe it was—" She didn't get any farther, as the roiling sensation exploded into heat that blasted through every part of her body. She was burning; she was melting. The absolute conviction that she was dying impressed itself on her brain. _Why the fuck did I drink some stupid fucking stuff from a test tube?_

Gradually, she came back to herself. Her breathing was harsh, but at least she _was_ breathing. She was also lying down. Opening her eyes, she looked around. It was still the same parking lot, but from a viewpoint a lot closer to the ground. Nothing seemed to be on fire, which seemed like a minor miracle to her. Then she looked down at her arm. She was still wearing her sweats, which indicated that she probably hadn't burst into flame after all, despite everything her nerve endings had been telling her.

As she hoisted herself to a sitting position, she heard footsteps, and looked around to see Madison and Sophia cautiously approaching. "Well, _that_ was no fun," she said out loud. Then she realised she'd pulled a perfect crunch, which she'd never done before.

"Okay, so what are your powers?" asked Sophia. "Can you fly? Run fast? Turn invisible?"

"Hm. Not sure." Emma flipped the vial into the air and held up the cork, skinny end upward. The vial went end for end twice, then dropped on to the cork, a perfect hit. Gathering her legs under her, she kicked off and pulled a backflip from a seated position that landed her on her feet. Lifting her sweats, she studied her stomach. "But whatever my powers are, they come with killer abs."

Madison's jaw dropped, and Emma could tell Sophia was struggling not to react with disbelief as well.

"What?" she asked. "I feel really fit now, but that's about it. Is fitness a super-power?"

"It is, the way you're using it," Sophia said dryly. "Wanna put your sneakers back on so Madison can take her vial?"

"Oh, yeah. Good point." Emma strolled over to where she'd kicked her shoes. On the way, she noticed that the gravel wasn't really bothering her anymore. On a whim, she flicked the sneakers up with her toes, then hacky-sacked them into her free hand. It was no more effort than pulling a handkerchief from her pocket.

"Damn, that's gonna take some getting used to." Sophia shook her head. "Let's go give Mads her privacy."

Side by side, they headed over to the barbecue. Emma could feel every piece of gravel underfoot, but none of them caused her pain.

They reached the barbecue and crouched down behind it. Emma took the time to shrug into her jacket, despite the fact that she no longer felt any particular chill from the morning air. "Okay!" Sophia called out to the petite brunette. Raising her head, Emma watched as her friend drank the vial down. Remembering her own dose, she thought the term 'vile' might be more apropos. In the event, Madison didn't spit it out or vomit it up, though from her body language, Emma thought either one might have been a near thing.

There was no flame, no explosion. Sophia and Emma could've watched the whole thing from two yards away. All Madison did was fall down and convulse a little.

"Did I do that?" asked Emma quietly.

"More or less, yeah." Sophia stood up and dusted her hands off. "Well, time to go see how the runt handles having powers."

Emma rolled her eyes as she stood up as well. "After that comment, I'd laugh if she grew fifty feet tall."

"Hey, you're basically Jackie Chan on steroids. Anything's possible."

"Yeah, right." Emma jabbed Sophia in the ribs with her elbow.

"What the—" Sophia tried to retaliate, but Emma nudged the elbow aside with a grace and dexterity she'd never had before. On her second attempt, Emma did exactly the same thing; when she tried a third time, Emma let her succeed. "Hah! Gotcha!"

"Yup." They'd gotten to where Madison was beginning to sit up, looking groggy. "Hey, Mads. How you feeling?"

"Like shit." Madison made it halfway to her feet, then collapsed on to her butt again. "How come you were standing and walking like straight away? My head feels like a football that's just been kicked into orbit."

"Just lucky, I guess." Emma extended a hand downward and grasped Madison's wrist. "Let's get you up." With a surge of strength that surprised even her, she hoisted Madison to a semblance of standing.

"Whoa!" yelped Madison in surprise. "Geez, warn a girl, why don't you?" Reaching up, she prodded Emma's arm. "Holy shit, you're _ripped._"

"Comes with the killer abs, I guess." Emma smirked. "So, what powers did you get? Just be warned, if you can fly, I will hate you forever."

Madison shook her head. "No, I can't fly." Standing more steadily now, she looked at her hands. Her fingers twitched. "I just want to build stuff."

"Stuff?" Sophia looked at her alertly. "What kind of stuff?"

"Power armour. Guns. Machines. Vehicles. _Stuff._" Madison smiled, showing her teeth. "I want to build _everything._"

Emma and Sophia looked at each other over the top of Madison's head. "Tinker," they chorused.

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End of Part Two


	3. Part Three: Figuring Things Out

**Earning Her Stripes**

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Part Three: Figuring Things Out

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_[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]_

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**The Next Day  
****Barnes Household**

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Madison had never been one for drawing before, but now it seemed to be second nature. And she could do it almost anywhere, even when what she was lying on was rising and falling at a metronomic pace. Or rather, _who_ she was lying on.

"Two seventy-_four_," panted Emma. "Two seventy-_five_, two seventy-_left,_ two seventy-_seven_ …" Wearing a tank top and sweat pants, she steadily cranked out the push-ups, just slowly enough that she could keep an audible count. Every five push-ups, she switched from one hand to the other, with no noticeable reduction in the rate. Madison barely paid attention to the changes. Lying full-length on Emma's back, she held a sketch-pad up above her head with one hand, the pencil in her other hand flickering over the paper.

The bedroom door opened and Sophia strolled in, drinking from a can of soda. "How's my two apprentices doing?" she asked with a grin.

"—seventy-_eight_, two seventy-_nine_, two _eighty,_ two eighty-_right_, two eighty-_two_ …"

"I've got my initial furnace designed and ready to go," Madison reported. "Plus the requirements for my first set of armour. Plus a big gun."

"Big gun?" Sophia raised her eyebrows. "How big?"

Madison sat up on Emma's back, crossing her legs as she restabilised her weight over the small of Emma's back. The redhead didn't seem to mind, or even notice. "Variable yield. At max power, it'll splatter Lung all over the landscape."

"—ninety-_nine_, three _hundred_." Emma paused. "Mads, get off."

"Okay, Ems." Obediently, Madison stood up, and Emma bounced to her feet. Apart from a faint sheen of sweat, she didn't even look like she'd been exercising. Madison couldn't even tell if she was breathing hard.

"Three hundred," Emma reported to Sophia. "To be honest, I don't think push-ups are even doing anything for me. It was like walking down a set of stairs. Slowly."

But Sophia wasn't listening. She stared at Madison, the soda-can half raised. "Are you sure?" she asked at last. "Won't that, uh, put holes in buildings and stuff?"

"And stuff, yeah. It would probably dig a crater out of Captain's Hill if we fired it in that direction, or clear out the Boat Graveyard once and for all." Madison tapped her chin with the pencil. "Probably a bad idea, with all the shrapnel we'd get. I think I'll keep max power under wraps for the time being. But yeah, first I need to build the tools to build the tools. So I need to construct my furnace first."

"Furnace?" Sophia gestured with the can. "Can't you just … you know, build power armour?"

"Out of _what_?" Madison rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I'm a Tinker. But even Tinkers need something to work with, and I refuse to construct stuff that'll fall apart in five minutes. What I _need_ is a refinery, but the first step is my furnace."

"Okay, then, what do we need for a furnace?"

Madison shrugged. "Three cars. One for parts, two for materials. I should have the furnace done in a day, and the parts made for my second furnace in another day."

Sophia seemed to be having trouble working this out. "Why do you need _two_ furnaces? Why can't you just use one? We've only got three weeks until school opens. You two need to be established heroes by then."

"Because I do!" Madison's voice rose. Turning, she stomped out of the room. She needed a soda in the worst way, and having Sophia question what was so _obvious_ really got up in her grille.

* * *

Emma watched Sophia's expression as Madison left the room. If she had to guess, Sophia was pissed that her attempts to come across as the master of everything parahuman were falling flatter than a pancake on Lord Street at rush hour. The vigilante had even tried to keep up with Emma when she started the push-ups, but had dropped out after the first forty, claiming that she had to be free to mentor both of them at the same time.

"What's with her?" Sophia asked. "She's gonna be a cape, you'd think she could handle a little pressure."

"You're not a Tinker. I'm not a Tinker. We're not qualified to decide how she does shit." Emma shrugged. "But push-ups aren't doing much except bore me to tears. What else should I be doing?"

Sophia got a nasty grin on her face. "Well, I might not know what a Tinker needs to be doing, but your powers are a lot more physical. I know physical. Do you remember any of those self-defense lessons I gave you that one time?"

It sounded to Emma like Sophia was looking to get some satisfaction by physically overbearing her. That was actually fine by her; if nothing else, she'd learn how to fight properly. There was no percentage in trying to learn from someone who _wasn't _trying to push her past her limits, after all. "Not much of them," she admitted. Sophia hadn't been a very patient teacher. To be fair, Emma hadn't been a very apt pupil. Well, this was about to change.

"Fine. We'll start from scratch. When are your folks due home again?"

"Sometime this evening," Emma said. "Dad said he was going to be meeting with associates again at the Augustus Country Club." She rolled her eyes. "Which means drinks until late."

"Excellent." Sophia angled her head toward the door. "Let's go down to the living room."

"Sure thing." Emma strolled out to where the stairs led down to the living room; on an impulse, she jumped up on the bannister and rode it all the way down sidesaddle, slipping off just before she would've hit the stair-post at the end. To her personal pride, she only took two steps to regain her balance.

"Rule number one!" called out Sophia from the top of the stairs. "If you grandstand during a battle like that, you'll get your ass handed to you. Don't do it!" She leaped off the top step and turned to shadow, gliding down almost weightlessly. When she turned solid at the bottom, she gave Emma a glare. "I can try to teach you, but if you won't learn, it's not my fault."

"No grandstanding. Got it." Emma decided not to point out that she hadn't been grandstanding, that it had been just as easy as walking down normally. She supposed that balancing on the rail and skating down barefoot would've been grandstanding. Almost as easy, but grandstanding all the same.

"Good." Sophia moved into the open part of the living room, then turned to face Emma. "Okay, now I want you to try to hit me." She settled into a vaguely defensive posture, though Emma could tell she was set up to deliver a stinging jab in response to any missed attacks.

"Um, shouldn't you be showing me _how_ to throw a punch first?" Emma thought she had a good idea of it, but she was also well aware of the concept of 'don't know how much you don't know'.

Sophia rolled her eyes. "Right. Yeah. Okay." She stepped up alongside Emma and took hold of her hand. Roughly, she folded Emma's fingers into a fist, with the thumb on the outside. "Okay, this is how your fist should look. And this is how it should go." Moving exaggeratedly slowly, she threw a couple of punches from the shoulder. "Got it?"

"Got it." Emma nodded, though she was fairly sure nobody else but her could have learned anything from the rough and ready lesson plan. She closed her hands into the fists Sophia had showed her, then resettled them into something that felt more natural. "What's next?"

Going back into her defensive stance, Sophia beckoned with one hand. "Try to hit me."

"Okay." Emma could see several holes in Sophia's defences, but she knew the whole purpose of the exercise was so that Sophia could demonstrate how to block a punch and retaliate. So she threw a half-speed blow at a point where she knew Sophia could knock it aside.

"Shit!" Sophia yelped and stepped back, the punch barely avoided. There was no question of a return jab. "Emma, it's not smart to go all-out from the word go. You've got to pace yourself in a fight."

"Oh, okay. Sorry. Um, maybe you should show me what I'm doing wrong." Emma was confused. Sophia knew how to fight. She'd _seen_ her fight before. _I didn't try to hit her **that** hard … did I?_

"Okay, then." Sophia huffed out a breath, her eyes slitted in anger. "I'm just gonna hit you lightly, and you figure out how to block me, okay?" Her bunched shoulders called her a liar. At least the first one was going to sting, a lot. Maybe the first five or six, until Emma had learned her place.

"Okay." Emma brought her hands up in front of her, ready to do her best at defending against Sophia actively trying to hit her. "Ready."

The first blow came in so telegraphed that Emma almost let it hit, sure it was a feint covering for a sneak attack waiting in the wings. At the last moment, she gave up looking for the sneak blow, and brushed the punch aside. No sneak attack came; it seemed that the 'feint' had been the real attack. Was Sophia trying to fake her out by disguising her punches as ineffectual jabs? No matter. Sophia had told her to defend herself.

"Lucky," grunted Sophia. "Let's see how you do with this one."

She launched a few more punches, and Emma pushed them aside, all the while waiting for the real volley of blows. None came. Sophia swung at her again and again, but the punches were so easy to avoid or evade that she stopped bothering using both arms to defend herself. Using just her left hand and arm, she pushed aside or blocked a dozen more punches. Her eye fell on Madison, who was standing in the kitchen doorway drinking a cold soda from the fridge; immediately, she felt thirsty herself.

"I want a soda," she said.

"You don't get a soda until you show me you can throw a proper punch," gritted Sophia, still attacking her.

Emma sighed and slipped two blows. Letting a third one glide over her shoulder, she straightened her left arm into a crisp backfist. Sophia's eyes widened an instant before the knuckles connected with her jaw; Emma felt the impact all the way up to her shoulder. It was a good thing the carpet was soft, because Sophia landed flat out on the floor a moment later.

Madison wandered over and stood looking down at her. "I think that was good enough," she decided, and took a drink from her soda. "But she's gonna be pissed when she comes to."

Heading into the kitchen, Emma opened the fridge and got a soda. "She did tell me to show her I could throw a punch."

"True."

Emma watched Sophia shake her head groggily and sit up. "Hey, Sophia, You okay?"

Sophia felt her jaw and glared at her. "Shut up."

Emma sipped from her soda. "Okay."

* * *

End of Part Three


	4. Part Four: Preparations

**Earning Her Stripes**

* * *

Part Four: Preparations

* * *

_[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]_

* * *

**Three Days Later  
****An Abandoned Warehouse  
****Emma Barnes**

* * *

Madison lowered her goggles and hefted the device she called the Cutter. "Cutting! Stand clear!"

Emma wasn't quite sure what principle the thing worked on, except that it ran off of regular building power. About the size and shape of a dust buster, though a lot heavier, it narrowed to a point at the business end. Holding it to metal and pressing the trigger caused a neat cut in the metal. Apart from that, there was no outward sign anything was happening; no sparks, no noise, no heat, nothing. The main reason Emma was careful to stand clear was that there was no way to tell if it was cutting until the cut actually happened.

"Standing clear," she replied, ready to assist Madison with wrestling slices of metal bound for the ever-hungry mouth of her furnace. As her friend touched the Cutter to the engine block of the third derelict car they'd found, Emma glanced over toward the furnace, making sure it was still doing what it was supposed to. Raw heat emanated from its open mouth, from the bubbling metal inside. She wasn't certain how the bits and pieces of the car Madison had constructed the furnace from were able to contain the molten metal, but there it was.

Getting hold of the cars themselves had been simultaneously the easiest and most strenuous job. Sophia had been able to locate cars that had been stolen and dumped, broken down or just abandoned on the side of the road. Madison's Tinker abilities let her get them running (or at least rolling) long enough to deliver them to an empty building on the edge of Merchants territory, where they were ready for the next stage.

After exerting herself all night (and in some cases, pushing cars for several blocks at a time), Emma had crashed for two hours then woken up fresh and ready to go again. Madison had fallen asleep twice in class, and Sophia had taken the day off altogether.

On the second night, Madison had constructed the Cutter, then demolished one car to make the furnace. _This_ night, they were feeding bits of the other two cars into it. Sophia hadn't shown up at all, which made Emma wonder if she was starting to get bored with the whole project. She'd spent the previous evening lecturing Madison on how the Tinkers _she'd_ heard of did stuff, until Madison snapped and yelled at her. Then she'd gone off in a huff, saying that there were muggers out there who hadn't been beaten up yet.

_I hope she's still on board with everything. My powers are so awesome; I can't wait to kick the shit out of Taylor with them._

Another slice of the engine block dropped free, leaving a smooth mirrored surface, and Madison moved the Cutter away. "Cutter off."

"Cool." Emma moved in and dragged the chunk of steel and whatever else off to the side, to join the other pieces. They were due to go into the furnace to make ready for the second pour, after the first one had been completed.

"Okay, that's enough for now." Madison wiped her forehead with the back of her heavily gloved arm, and carefully set the Cutter down. As an added precaution, she unplugged it from the extension cord. "Time for the first pour."

"And this will be the second furnace, right?" Emma thought this was the case, but she wanted to be sure.

"Yup. This one'll be made of good steel, and I'll be able to make more good steel stuff from it without ruining it."

"Ruining it?" Emma frowned. "So what we're doing now is ruining this furnace?"

"Oh, yeah." Madison leaned up and tapped a gauge. "One more good pour after this one, and it'll be ready for retirement. Well, recycling."

"So what's 'good steel', anyway?" asked Emma as she followed Madison on an inspection tour of the moulds that had already been laid out.

"It's my name for it. Dunno what it's really called. You've got to put just the right materials in at the right moment, and let it stay at a certain heat for a certain time. If you pour just at the right moment, it'll come out a whole lot stronger and more durable than ordinary steel." Madison shrugged. "Otherwise, what's the point?"

"Makes total sense to me," Emma agreed, mentally adjusting her definition of the phrase 'total sense'. "So, what do you want me to do?"

"Make sure nobody comes in at the wrong time and disrupts the pour," Madison said, heading back to the furnace. "And stay well back. It's gonna get real hot in here."

"Okay." Emma ran toward a shipping container that sat nearby in the warehouse. Jumping lightly into the air, she kicked off from one of the door hinges and vaulted on top with an ease that she never would've come close to equalling before. As far as she could tell, her eyesight was a bit better than it had been before, but not superhuman; just smoothed out to maximum human capacity. She'd asked Madison about the chances of having night-sight goggles made, and her friend had sketched out a helmet that would've weighed about twenty pounds. The design contained built-in goggles capable of emitting a microwave beam capable of frying bugs at ten paces, but Emma decided the weight would be too much. From her sketches, Madison could build a lot of stuff. Unfortunately, 'miniaturised' didn't exist as a descriptor for any of it.

Another question she'd asked was why Madison hadn't just used the shipping containers themselves for the furnace. Madison had looked at her as if she'd asked why the sky wasn't green and explained that shipping containers didn't have the materials that she needed.

Moving with a level of precision that Emma had never seen in her friend before she'd gotten her powers, Madison went to the side of the furnace and pulled a lever. As liquid metal spilled white-hot down a channel into the first of the moulds, Emma felt the wave of heat hit her from across the room. What it must be like for Madison, she had no idea. Keeping one eye on the entrances, she watched with a level of fascination as the petite brunette managed the pour, moving levers and adjusting dials as though she'd been training for this all her life. One after another, the moulds filled exactly to the brim with molten 'good steel', whatever that really was.

"What the hell's going on here?"

The harsh voice cut into her musings, and she snapped her attention around to the side door about ten yards from the end of the shipping container. They'd closed the door, but there had been no way to lock it; or rather, Madison hadn't felt like constructing a lock for it right then. Besides, the metal wall beside the door was so rusty and full of holes that a moderately determined kick would smash it in.

Pulling the bandanna she was wearing up to cover the lower part of her face, Emma moved to get a view of the door. It was now open, and people were now entering. She could tell that there were five of them and, while the lighting in the warehouse was uncertain to say the best, they looked a lot like Merchants to her. _Well, crap._

"The fuck?" The leader of this group, or maybe the least stoned, pointed at where Madison was still working on getting the pour just right. "Someone Tinkering here and not fuckin' working for us? How the shit is that fair?"

Emma sighed and jumped down from the shipping container, absorbing the impact with a casual flexing of her knees. "Walk away, boys," she advised them, doing her best to pitch her voice for maximum intimidation. That was something she was still learning from Sophia, though the black girl had given up on teaching her anything about fighting. "Nothing to see here. Move along."

"Shit!" The lead Merchant stopped and pulled a pistol from his waistband. The others brandished pipes or knives. "Cape!"

"She's not a fuckin' cape," jeered another Merchant. "She's just a wannabe. If she had powers, we woulda seen 'em by now."

"Oh, yeah." The gang member brought up the pistol but before he could point it at Emma, she was in motion. Dashing forward with a level of explosive acceleration that not even Sophia would've been able to match in her best day at track, she closed with the guy before he was properly aware that she was in his face.

All five began to move, but with a sluggish inevitability that let her plot out her moves more than a second into the future. Her reactions were already fast; with the chance to plan her actions in advance, she was even faster. Lunging forward into a jump just before the pistol would have come into line, she grabbed his wrist with one hand and his pistol with the other. A twist in midair let her wrap one leg around his neck, the unexpected weight sending him stumbling backward as he flailed for balance.

Digging her thumb into the correct pressure point released the pistol into her hand. As the Merchant began to collapse backward, she threw her newly acquired weapon at the head of gang member number two, who was carrying a pipe. Landing on her feet as gang member number one fell heavily on to his back, she drove her elbow into the jaw of number three. Then she caught the pistol as it rebounded off the head of number two and kicked the falling pipe (also from number two) so that it smacked hard into the jaw of number four; one of the knife guys.

The second knife guy (and fifth gang member) stood staring, right up until the pistol (Emma really liked its throwing balance) smacked him between the eyes and dropped him to the ground. As part of the throwing motion, Emma spun around and delivered a back kick to the jaw of the first guy, who was just starting to sit up and look around. He promptly slumped to the ground again. With a satisfied _hm_, she reached up and back, just in time to catch the firearm as it bounced back off the fifth gang member's skull and into her hand.

"What's going on over there?" called out Madison. "Is there a problem?"

"No, no problem." Emma sighed in irritation as she looked down at the feebly twitching gang members. "Just a pest control issue. Do we have any zip-ties?"

A shadowy form came through the wall, then reformed as Sophia in her Shadow Stalker costume, performing a dramatic diving roll. She came to her feet, crossbow out and pointed at the downed gang members. "Don't move!" she shouted. "I've got you … oh." Walking closer, she stared at the five guys. "Holy shit, uh, girl. Was this all you?"

"I guess?" Emma said with a shrug. "It wasn't really challenging. More like solving a kid's math puzzle, you know? I knew all the answers, I just had to figure out how to make it happen in the shortest possible time." She frowned as she looked Sophia over. "I have to say, it's amazingly coincidental, you bursting in just after some Merchants show up here."

"I was tracking them," Sophia said, almost defensively. "I didn't want to bust them if they weren't doing anything wrong. Soon as I knew they'd gone in, I came in after them."

_Really._ Emma wondered how much of that was truth, and how much was Sophia trying to grandstand a little within their burgeoning team. Since getting powers of her own, she'd become a lot more cynical about superheroes in general. But it probably wasn't worth calling Sophia on her bullshit, so she changed the subject by hefting the pistol in her hand. "I've never even used one of these things. Should I start? I mean, I don't want to get crossbows and step all over your shtick." She remembered the abortive attempt by Sophia to tutor her in using a crossbow. After six bullseyes in a row, including the one where she'd bounced the arrow off the wall to get it into the target just to see if she could, Sophia had declared the whole thing bullshit and refused her access to the crossbow again.

"No, you shouldn't." From the sour tone of Sophia's voice, she was remembering the same thing. "Heroes carrying guns sends the wrong message, unless you're Miss Militia, and the PRT gets really antsy. Maybe get one of those big-ass compound bows that look like someone's construction project. I figure you could do stuff with arrows that would make 'em all swear blind you were carrying around Tinkertech."

"Yeah, but then I'd be lumbered with a big fragile bit of gear, or I'd have to get an actual Tinker to make me one that could collapse into a small space." Madison, she already knew, was not the right person to ask about something like that. A bow capable of taking out a Mack truck with one arrow; sure. One that could also collapse to hang off her hip? Not so much.

"Pfft, yeah, nope." Sophia shook her head as she bent over the gang members, zip-tying their limbs together. "I still can't see why she can't build one like that for you, though. I mean, if Armsmaster can …"

"Because she's _not Armsmaster_." Emma wondered if her friend would ever get it. "Her Tinker stuff is always bulky, because it's too tough to … waiiiit a minute." The epiphany that broke across her mind almost blinded her. "Hey, M, could you build a bow that I could also use as a melee weapon?"

Madison looked around at the shouted query. "A _bow?_ I guess. But it wouldn't be a very good one. Not if you also wanted to hit people with it. Why?"

Emma waved the pistol. "Because ranged weapons would be a good idea? I'm currently limited to what I can punch and what I can throw."

"Huh." Madison seemed to think about that. "Can you throw stuff that can bounce back to you? If I made it so it wouldn't break?"

"Sure." Emma tossed up the pistol and caught it again. "Why?"

Madison's grin gleamed in the dying glow of molten metal. "Let me get back to you on that."

* * *

End of Part Four


	5. Part Five: The Real Thing

**Earning Her Stripes**

Part Five: The Real Thing

* * *

_[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]_

* * *

**Team Base  
****One Week Later  
****Emma**

* * *

Madison cleared her throat. "Okay, I know I called you in at short notice, but I've been working on both offensive and defensive items for you, Emma—"

"What'd you do with 'em?" interrupted Sophia, leaning against the wall with her arms folded.

"What?" Madison looked guiltily around at the dark-clad girl. "What did I do with what?"

"Not what, who. The Merchants who crashed the party. Remember? Last week?" Sophia uncrossed her arms and took a few steps toward Madison. "I can't hear their bitching, and there's no fast-food bags lying around anymore." A nasty grin spread across her face. "Holy shit, did you finally woman up and do what had to be done?"

"Oh, no." Emma shook her head, a feeling of dread sweeping down her spine. "Madison, what have you done?"

Madison looked from one of them to the other, panic building in her voice and on her face. "I didn't have any choice!" she blurted. "We couldn't keep them locked up in the shipping container forever, and I was running low on money to buy them fast food! Besides, no matter how many wet wipes I gave them, they refused to keep themselves clean! It was horribly unhygienic in there!"

Emma stared at her friend, hoping against hope that her horrible suspicions were unfounded. Madison hadn't _seemed_ to be taking after Sophia's bloodthirsty ways, but she could never be sure. "Madison, you didn't … did you?"

Sophia bared her teeth. "You did, didn't you?" She seemed to be positively gloating over the moment.

"I had to let them go!" wailed Madison. "I'm sorry! I couldn't see anything else to do!"

Emma blinked, unsure about what she'd just heard. "What."

Sophia stared at Madison, apparently even more taken off guard than Emma. "You're _shitting_ me."

"They would've _died_ in there!" protested Madison. "Or gotten really sick and _then_ died! I'm not a murderer! I didn't want to let them go, but—"

She was cut off when Emma grabbed her in a tight hug. "You did the _right thing, _Mads," the redhead told her fervently, relief surging through her entire body. "We couldn't hold them forever, and killing them out of hand would've made us worse than them."

"What the fuck?" Sophia's voice overrode Emma's. "Have the both of you gone fuck-knuckle crazy? Am I the only sane one here? Letting them go was the _worst _thing you could've done! Had you forgotten that the Merchants have fucking _capes_? They're probably on the way back here right now, and it won't be to fuckin' say _thank you for letting our guys go._ If they get their hands on you, you'll be _lucky_ if you just end up on the street, turning tricks for your next fix!"

Emma let go of Madison. She opened her mouth to snap at Sophia, but Madison got her oar in first. "That's exactly why I called you guys in," she said crisply. "I've got basic motion sensors set up for three blocks around, and if that blinking light on my screen is right, they just hit the outer perimeter." She headed off to one of her work benches.

"So what do we do?" asked Emma, following her.

"Well, I've been working on something for you." Madison picked up something from the bench and held it out to her. "This wristband goes on your right wrist." With a grunt, she pulled a near-identical band off a metal disc that was lying on the bench. "And this one goes on your left wrist."

Emma examined the wristbands. They were more like bracers, long enough to cover her forearms altogether. Made of linked metal, they were heavy, but not so heavy that she couldn't handle it. Putting the appropriate one around her right forearm, she pressed it closed and felt it click into place. She repeated the action with the other one, then swung her arms around to test the weight. As she'd thought, she could handle it. As a bonus, her forearms were now protected, and she could bash targets with them.

"Nice," she said appreciatively, then looked at the discs Madison was now holding. "And those attach to the bands?" She'd already taken note of the bracket on the back of each forearm.

"Got it in one." Madison handed Emma the discs and the redhead clicked them into place on her arms. They added noticeably to the weight, but Emma thought it was still acceptable. Plus, the discs now gave her much more protection against incoming attacks.

"I like it." Emma took hold of the left-hand disc with her right hand and figured out how to detach it. Hefting it a couple of times, she turned to face the nearest wall. Pulling the disc back, she gave it a sharp flick. It blurred across the intervening distance, then rebounded sharply with a loud _clang_. Reaching up, she snatched it out of the air and reattached it to her left forearm, all in one motion. "Scratch that," she said with a wide grin. "I _love_ it."

A red light started flashing and a low tone sounded. Madison looked around. "That's the near perimeter alarm," she said. "They're on the same block as us."

"I fuckin' _told_ you," Sophia said viciously. She waved her hand at Emma while focusing her attention on Madison. "All the bouncy throwing discs in the world aren't gonna make up for the fact that you can't fight. We're good, but there's only two of us."

"Who said I can't fight?" Madison headed over toward a metal crate that was almost as high as she was.

"What are you gonna do?" Sophia wasn't letting this go. "Hide from them?"

"Not exactly." Madison slapped a panel on the crate. It began to unfold, then stopped. Madison climbed up into it, then hit another panel. As it resumed the process, Emma watched as Madison was sealed in behind a couple of inches of the shimmering gray metal the Tinker called 'good steel'. By the time the articulated suit finished rearranging itself, it was eight feet tall, angular arms and legs flexing and moving around as Madison activated them. A blocky 'head' with glowing red eyes looked down at them. Heavy-duty rubberised hoses led from connectors in the shoulders to halfway down the 'biceps'. Similar hoses connected the 'thighs' to the 'calves'.

"Power armour." Emma finally found her voice. "You made power armour."

_"Mark One,"_ Madison's voice was gravelly and metallic over the speakers. _"This one's pretty minimal compared to what I'll be able to make with real resources, but it should do for the time being."_

Sophia spoke up. "Those hoses on the arms and legs are a weak point. You do know people will target them, right? Your fancy-dancy power armour won't be worth shit if you can't move your legs or arms."

Emma hated to admit it, but she had a point. The hoses did look extremely vulnerable. When faced with a Brute-style opponent, capes were notorious for going after any weak points they could see. And those hoses, even as thick and reinforced as they were, shouted 'target' to Emma's fighting instincts.

_"Why don't you let me worry about that."_ Even with the electronic distortion, Madison's irritation was clearly audible.

Just then, a bulky vehicle smashed in through the front roller-door. A resounding BOOM came from the door at the far end of the warehouse, and Emma spun around.

"Shit!" she blurted. "They're coming at us from both directions!" It was a classic military pincer manoeuvre, and she cursed herself for not anticipating it. Just because the Merchants were perpetually drug-fucked didn't mean they couldn't accidentally pull off something like this.

The front of Squealer's vehicle split open, the two sides hinging apart to allow the exit of a huge shambling vaguely humanoid mass of trash. Several men armed with pipes, chains and clubs followed him out.

"Fuck," Sophia said. "That's Mush."

_"I know,"_ Madison said. _"You two go deal with the others. I got this." _She started toward the animated trash heap, her long metallic legs eating up the distance.

"Shit," Emma said, agonising over the need to protect her friend and the equally strong need to defend their base. The yelling as Merchants flooded into the building from the far end decided her; if she stood and did nothing, they'd win automatically. Turning, she sprinted toward the incoming wave of invaders. She couldn't see Sophia anywhere, so she figured the more experienced vigilante had gone to shadow and was working around for a flank attack. It was what she'd do.

The first Merchants she met were not the ones she'd encountered on their first foray. They saw a teenage girl running at them and came to meet her. This didn't go well for them; her throwing discs packed a real punch at close range, and while she avoided head shots (she didn't want to _kill_ them after all) she found that body hits put them on the ground just as fast. Leg shots were a little harder, but a broken femur or kneecap was ideal for removing them from the equation. It was also possible, she found, to backfist someone with the wristband while waiting for the throwing-disc to return. The heavy metal packed a very gratifying impact, almost as good as hitting someone with the discs.

Finally, she saw Sophia, perched on top of a shipping container (one of the few remaining in the base) as she shot arrows at the Merchants. Some of her targets were down and screaming, while others were ominously quiet. Emma gritted her teeth; it seemed that the harder she pushed Sophia to tone down her aggression for the heroic image, the more Sophia was determined to push back. Sophia was her friend and teammate, but they were going to have to have _words_ about this at some point. Sooner rather than later.

Abruptly, she felt her traction vanish as her feet went out from under her. Looking down as she kicked herself into the air, she saw a field covering the ground, blue fading to violet. With the last of her upward impetus, she tucked into a roll then dropped a disc on the ground and landed on it with both feet. Upright, bending her knees for maximum flexibility, she surfed Skidmark's field to where it petered out rather than being spat out like trash.

At the far end of the field, the Merchant leader himself invited her to do something anatomically impossible (not to mention disgustingly perverted) while he dumped a bucket of gravel into the skid-field. Emma kicked up the disc and caught it as she dived out of the way; crouching, she hid behind the discs, catching the few pieces that came her way on the shields.

"Fuck you, Skidmark!" yelled Sophia, levelling her crossbow at the costumed villain. Emma made the calculation on the instant; Sophia was going for a headshot. A lethal attack. _Not on my watch._

In another instant, she had both throwing-discs in hand. One went upward at an angle, soaring in front of Sophia just as she triggered the crossbow. The other whiffed past Skidmark, making him duck and curse. The arrow hit the first disc and shattered on impact, while the second disc hit the wall behind Skidmark and bounced back to smack him solidly (but not _too_ solidly) on the back of the head. The field dissipated as he collapsed bonelessly to the ground.

"What the fuck?" yelled Sophia. "I had him! What the hell was that?"

"I just saved you from a murder charge," Emma retorted sharply. She headed forward and checked his pulse; it was strong and steady. A large squared-off roofing beam lay just inside the doorway. She guessed he'd used it as a battering ram to get the door open.

"Make yourself useful and secure him. And make sure the others are still alive. I'm gonna go help Madison." Both her throwing discs had fallen nearby (by design, not accident) and she took the time to retrieve them before heading toward the other end of the warehouse.

She wasn't sure what she would find when she got there. Madison's armour had looked sturdy enough to take a bit of punishment; with any luck, she would've kept Mush busy until Emma got there to deal with matters. Firmly, she kept herself from imagining the worst. The armour disabled and cracked open, with Madison as a hostage or dead. _No. She builds better than that._

A few moments later, she learned just how true that was. When she negotiated the intervening obstacles and came in sight of the intruding vehicle. Madison was nowhere in sight, and Mush was gone as well … no. He was still there. A skinny little bald man was lying groaning in among several large heaps of trash. He looked more than a little red in the face and chest, for what reason, Emma had no idea. The few other Merchants who had come in with the vehicle looked like they'd been clubbed to the ground with each other.

Sounds of complicated destruction came from within the vehicle, while the engine revved loudly. Caterpillar tracks attempted to drag the monstrosity back out of the hole, but the doors that had swung wide open in the nose were now stuck in that position, bent far back and jammed. As such, they prevented the vehicle from retreating.

As Emma prepared to enter the vehicle, the engine cut out altogether. "Uh … M?" she called out into the resulting silence.

"_Call me Blockade_," Madison's electronic vocaliser replied. Heavy footsteps sounded from within the darkness of the vehicle. Emma saw the glowing red eyes before the rest of the suit emerged from the shadows. Once Madison came fully into the light, Emma saw that she was carrying a trashily dressed woman by the scruff of the neck. The woman looked somewhat dazed, and her goggles were shattered. Both of Madison's shoulder hoses were detached at the bicep end, and flopped around loosely. This didn't seem to be impairing her movement in any way.

"Did you want me to reattach those?" asked Emma, pointing at one of the hoses.

_"Nah."_ Madison tossed the feebly moving Squealer onto a pile of garbage next to Mush. _"They're only decoys anyway. Mush pulled them loose and got a face full of live steam."_ As Emma watched, the hoses straightened up, aimed briefly at her, then reconnected themselves to their attachment points.

"Live steam?" she couldn't help asking. "Why do you have live steam in your suit? What do you need that for?"

_"Smartasses who think they can cheat by hitting my weak points."_

Emma wanted to burst out laughing but she couldn't afford to, right then. "Okay," she said bemusedly. "We seem to have captured the Merchants. What do we do now?"

Madison made a motion like cracking her knuckles. _"Only one choice. We go live as a superhero team, and hand them over to the PRT. Two birds, one stone."_

"Hey, that is not your damn decision!" Sophia, sounding pissed off (as usual) came stomping in from the far end of the warehouse. "They're secured. Now we gotta decide what to do with them. Not just one person deciding for all three of us."

"That's easy." Emma grinned. "I vote we do what Blockade just said. Now we've got a majority voting for that."

"Whoa, wait just a second." Sophia tried to stare her down. "I'm more experienced. I should have more say."

Madison made a rude noise via her speakers. _"What was that about 'not just one person deciding for us all'?"_

"She's right," Emma decided as Sophia gave Madison's battle armour a death glare. "The vote's in. Two to one."

_"One question, though."_ Madison sounded thoughtful. _"What are we gonna call ourselves?"_

"I think we're moving way too fast with this, but if we're gonna do it, we're gonna need a good name," Sophia declared. "We need to show people we're the real thing, not some bunch of wannabe losers, even if some of us _are_ luckier than they've got any right to be." She divided her glare evenly between Emma and Madison.

"Got it!" Emma exclaimed, snapping her fingers and ignoring Sophia's bitching. The girl, she was learning, hated to lose, even to teammates. "That's the perfect name."

"What?"

_"What?"_

"The Real Thing. That's what we'll call ourselves."

There was a pause, then Madison nodded. _"I like it."_

"Sophia?" asked Emma. There was no point in picking a name that all three of them didn't approve of. Of course, given that Sophia had said it first …

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Sophia waved her hand dismissively. "It's not a terrible name."

"Great! It's settled." Emma looked over at Madison. "How fast can you help me throw together a costume?"

_"Depends."_ Madison headed over to her nearest workbench. _"What did you have in mind?"_

Emma went with her, leaving Sophia to secure the prisoners. "Well, the bad guys have already seen my hair, so I was thinking of a flame-themed costume to go with it, and maybe call myself Firebird, but with a wig _over _my hair that's longer than my normal hair …"

_"Doable."_

"And can you put a flame motif on my throwing discs? They're amazing, by the way."

_"Easily."_

Emma clapped her hands. "Okay, then. Let's get this show on the road."

* * *

End of Part Five


	6. Part Six: Tests Passed and Failed

**Earning Her Stripes**

* * *

Part Six: Tests Passed and Failed

* * *

_[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]_

* * *

**Armsmaster**

* * *

_"Console to Armsmaster."_

"Go for Armsmaster." Colin leaned the bike into a turn. It was responding well; the newer version of the ring-laser gyro gave it cleaner balance, and it recovered even keel just a little faster. He might have to look into moving the centre of gravity back about a foot, to give optimal grip for both the front and back tyres in all conditions, but this iteration of his iconic vehicle was holding up well.

Action figures featuring the "Armscycle" accounted for thirty-seven percent more sales and fifty-three percent more profit than standalone figures, or so Marketing had told him. He didn't care about that so much, but he did like it that the bike had its own recognition factor. It was all part of being an effective superhero.

_"Yeah, we got a call from near the Trainyards. Merchants territory. A bunch of new heroes apparently captured them, and they want to know who to turn them over to."_

"Well, that's different. Armsmaster, attending."

_"I hear that. Copy Armsmaster attending. Sending you the location and details now."_

His helmet speakers pinged to indicate an incoming file. With a flick of his eye, he opened it; it unfolded into a map with a flashing red dot somewhat to the north and west of his current location. His GPS filled in the rest of the information, and before he'd made the next turn, he had a glowing line on the map leading toward the red dot. At the same time, a broad yellow path appeared in his HUD, indicating the way forward.

Trusting the bike to handle acceleration, braking and obstacle avoidance, he scanned through the packet of data that had arrived with the map. The caller had been a teenage girl, calling herself Firebird. No matches popped up in the database for that name, in Brockton Bay or elsewhere. She had claimed to be part of a team called The Real Thing. The only significant links to that online were in relation to music; either a song or an actual band. Neither one was helpful to him at the moment.

Ten minutes later, he rounded a corner on to a dingy street, to see a bunch of people seated on the curb in a row. More than a few, he noted, bore bandages on their arms or legs. Others had their limbs actually splinted. All were secured in some way, either at the wrists or the ankles. One was in costume, though he was currently blindfolded and secured at both hand and foot. Colin recognised the grimy outfit immediately; Skidmark. A little distance away from him, her wrists and ankles likewise secured, a trashily-dressed woman wearing goggles (his HUD gave her a 95% chance of being Squealer) looked mad enough to chew up horseshoes and spit out nails. A third man, wizened and undernourished, had likewise been thoroughly secured. He surmised this might be Mush, from the few descriptions the PRT had of the man.

"Armsmaster to Console. I'm just arriving on site now. It appears as though the Merchants have indeed been captured. There are injuries. I would advise that medical-trained personnel attend the pickup." His eyes scanned the row of prisoners. The HUD, picking up on the motion, helpfully advised him that there were thirty-two persons sitting and three standing. A moment later, it stuttered to 'two standing', then back to three again.

He wasn't surprised by its lack of certainty. Of the three heroes standing behind the row of captives, two were quite apparently human. The third was an eight foot tall robot built of some shimmering grey metal with a blocky black shape on the chest that looked like the crenellations on the wall of a medieval fortress. The robot, or suit, looked far too clunky for his liking, and the hoses connecting one part to another spoke to him of poor planning. Still, he figured it wasn't too bad for a first try, especially as they'd managed to capture the Merchants right out of the gate.

The other two heroes were both recognisable as teenage girls, but he knew which one had made the call immediately. She had identified herself as Firebird, and only one there had a fire-themed costume. The other one, Shadow Stalker, had been making waves now and again with her brutal takedowns of muggers. It hadn't gotten so far as to necessitate the PRT stepping in, but the possibility was not off the table yet.

He pulled the bike to a halt and stepped off in one smooth motion. The bike maintained its upright stance after he let go the handlebars, then lowered its stand as part of its self-parking routine. Paying no attention to that, he stepped forward to inspect the prisoners more closely. They all looked awake and alert, though some seemed to be sweating or even tweaking. The bandages appeared to have been relatively freshly applied, and some had bloodstains on them.

Next, his eyes flicked up to the three heroes of The Real Thing, if that was all of them. To have captured an entire active gang, even such a screwed-up one as the Merchants, was a good trick for two unknowns and a B-class loner vigilante to have pulled off.

"Good morning," he said. "This is good work. Do they have any life-threatening injuries?"

The girl he was assuming to be Firebird, who looked about fifteen or sixteen, shook her head. "Not that I'm aware of. Some were suffering from blood loss, but we bandaged them and got food and water into them." She stepped between two of the prisoners and held her hand out. "Firebird. I'm the one who made the call. You probably already know Shadow Stalker. And that's Blockade."

He shook her hand, finally paying attention to the details of her costume. The broad discs attached to her forearms looked like they could be used as shields, but they seemed too unwieldy to be just good for that. Her knees and elbows, and the toes and heels of her boots, all had metal guards; on her head, she wore a metal helmet with a gold-coloured visor. Long red hair spilled out from under the back. Each metal piece, including the discs and the bracers they were attached to, had a fire motif that seemed to be based more on interference patterns than actual painted-on fire shapes, given the way the flames appeared to shift as his perspective changed. Underneath, she wore a black bodysuit that looked like it incorporated significant padding, and served to draw attention to the metal guards.

"Armsmaster," he said out of politeness. "But you knew that. So you have fire powers?"

She chuckled. "No, it's just my theme." Lifting her arm, she showed him a short nozzle emerging from the wrist bracer. "I do have a short-ranged flamethrower in there, but there isn't much room for fuel, so it's mainly for emergencies. And surprise attacks. For the most part, I find that punching people works just fine, when I'm not bouncing my discs off them."

"Ah, so they detach." He looked again at the discs. "Are they easy to learn how to handle?"

"I wouldn't know." Her voice held subtle self-mockery. "Anything like this, I seem to automatically know how to use, like I've been training all my life to do it."

"Ah." On an impulse, he reached back and unracked his halberd. With the correct signal, it unlocked and opened out to its full length. Another signal ensured that the various mechanisms within it would stay shut down until he woke it up. A third signal, not yet sent, would teleport it straight back to his hand if she did anything unwise with it. "What can you do with something like this?"

Behind her visor, he saw her eyes widen, but she managed to hold back her reaction, beyond a slight parting of her lips. At the same time, Shadow Stalker rapped her knuckles against the leg of the robot and casually gestured their way.

"Let me see," Firebird murmured, taking the weapon and looking it over, then adjusting her grip as if she'd been … training with it all her life, she'd said. Even Miss Militia had required some instruction in how to hold it properly. Intrigued, he watched as the girl took a few steps away, then turned to face him. The halberd snapped into a vertical salute, then blurred in her hands into a complex evolution that incorporated strikes, parries, deflections and blocks, taken in lightning-fast sequence, never once interfering with the discs on her forearms.

He watched, trying to prevent his jaw from dropping open as a girl half his age used his chosen weapon to perform manoeuvres that even he was only just getting the hang of, and some he'd flat-out never seen before. Finally, she brought it around to a whirling finish that ended in another salute, then she handed it back. "I figure I could make it work for me," she allowed.

Mentally, he blessed the fact that he'd had his helmet recording the whole thing. He had watched videos and read books on how halberds had been used in the Middle Ages, and considered himself to be more than just 'good' with it. But he'd just been schooled in no uncertain terms by a teenager who'd never picked one up before in her life. His software was able to take that visual footage and translate it into a training regime, and he was _absolutely_ going to train with those moves that she'd just pulled out of nowhere, until he was _at least_ as good as her.

"That was very impressive," he said gravely, fully aware that he had just committed blatant understatement. Causing the weapon to fold up again, he slotted it onto the rack on his back. "I'm going to presume Blockade is the Tinker who incorporated the armour into your costume?"

"_That's me_." The robot took a step forward, its voice gravelly over the speakers. _"Firebird hits people. I make things for her to hit them with."_ Buried under the electronic distortion was a certain amount of humour. _"I like your halberd, but it looks a little fragile to me."_

"I _beg_ your pardon," he retorted, stung. "That's the finest miniaturised Tinkertech you'll see on the east coast. There's nothing 'fragile' about it."

_"Oh, please," _retorted the person in the armour. _"I bet I could break it just by stepping on it."_

He looked the armour over, trying to calculate how much it weighed. Unless it was built over a light frame of aluminum, he figured it was at least a ton. "Well, of course," he snorted. "That's not 'fragile'. That's to be expected."

_"Not for my stuff, it's not," _Blockade stated flatly. _"If I can break it, it's not strong enough."_

This call-out had suddenly gotten a lot more interesting. Colin's Tinker instincts came to the fore as he raised his chin. "You always have to consider utility over durability. If it's too heavy to be useful, then what's the point of making it so strong?"

_"There's no such thing as being too heavy to be useful," _averred Blockade. _"If some jerk villain can break it with his powers, then it wasn't strong enough."_

Colin drew in a deep breath for his rebuttal, a smile spreading across his face despite himself. _This_ was a true meeting of the minds. "But if you can't lift or carry it easily, how can it be useful …"

* * *

**Emma**

* * *

As the argument went on, Emma found herself more and more impressed with Madison. Not only was she debating the finer points of Tinkertech with Armsmaster, she was doing it with confidence and the willingness to totally disagree with him on matters that were obviously dear to his heart. Not that she was winning the argument, if 'winning' meant turning him to her point of view; he'd been doing this for years, after all. But it seemed she was certainly forcing him to re-evaluate some of his stances.

"Gotta say, never thought she had it in her," murmured Sophia as the back-and-forth kept up between the two Tinkers. "If I was her, I'd be asking him for his autograph right now. Hell, I still might. The man knows how to lay on a beatdown."

Emma nodded, entirely in tune with her sentiment, though perhaps not every single aspect of it. She personally wondered if he would agree to spar with her at some point, if only to see what she could learn from someone who'd been doing the superhero thing for almost her whole life. Also, she'd give _anything _to be able to say that she'd sparred with Armsmaster. Just being able to handle his halberd and put it through a solid workout had been a dream come true.

"I can see why he uses a halberd," she replied, keeping her voice down. "It's so versatile. There are so many possible moves. I mean, it's not like a baseball bat or something. It's good for offense and defense."

"Yeah, I saw the love affair you were having with it," jibed Sophia derisively. "Do you think maybe if you showed off with it any more, he'd let you borrow it for a while? Because that's what it looked like you were trying for, to me."

"It wasn't like that!" Emma shot back, irritated. "It was just so well-balanced and properly constructed, I had fun using it."

"Hah, so that's the way it is." Sophia sounded amused. "Always wondered why you never got a steady boyfriend. You just had to find one with a long, hard—"

"Don't even _go_ there," hissed Emma furiously. She jabbed Sophia in the ribs, the metal elbow-guard catching her in just the right place to stop her from talking. "He's old enough to be my _dad._"

Sophia, caught off-guard, let out a _whoof_ of expelled air. Lurching sideways a step, she put her arm up to where Emma had hit her. "Fine, be a wet blanket," she wheezed. "Can't even take a joke."

"There's jokes, and then there was what you were about to say." Emma shook her head. "That was rude, crude and not funny at all."

"Funny, you never had a problem with making jokes like that about Hebert." Sophia sounded resentful, but she didn't seem to be about to resume her remarks.

Emma rolled her eyes. "That's different, and you know it_._"

She would've said more, but just then the first PRT van rolled around the corner. Clearing her throat, she stepped forward to keep an eye on her prisoners until the PRT took charge of them.

_Establish ourselves as a team. Check._

The plan was proceeding apace.

* * *

End of Part Six


End file.
